More Visible : N. County’s Illegals Feel New Hostility

The Mexican farm worker with callused hands and piercing black eyes lugged only a rudimentary education north from his native Chiapas, Mexico. However, Alfredo Zepeda, whose unmistakable Indian features appear out of place in affluent North County, was wise enough to know when he was disliked.

Zepeda, 30, was sitting inside a ramshackle hut covered with black plastic talking about what it is like to live in an environment dominated by Anglos, who at times can be incredibly intolerant but who are also the primary source of Zepeda’s economic existence. Zepeda, who lives in a camp called Valle Verde near La Costa along with about 200 other workers, makes a meager living doing yardwork and occasionally washing cars for nearby, well-to-do residents.

“My companion and I were at the Vons store one afternoon buying some potatoes, canned beans and eggs for dinner,” Zepeda said. “We had been doing landscape work all day, so we were a little dirty. This gringo who was in the store stared at us like we were animals and gave us a look of disgust.

Three Workers Hired

“A few days later, the same man who looked at us with what I consider hatred pulled up to the flower stand where we wait for work in the morning and picked up three of the fellows. It seemed to me that he did not want to see us shop where he shops, yet he is quite willing to hire us to clean his yard or cut his grass.”

Zepeda’s remarks were echoed time and again by migrant workers in a dozen camps throughout North County visited recently by a reporter. At camps in Encinitas, near Fairbanks Ranch, in Carlsbad and in Vista, Oceanside and other areas, migrants spoke of the increasing hostility of the Anglo population.

That hostility has not gone unnoticed by the people who have had continuing contact with the aliens over the years. Many trace the ill feeling to a combination of new housing developments moving residents closer to existing alien encampments and the waning availability of agricultural jobs that aliens traditionally depended on for employment. Now, observers say, many migrant workers have been forced into the open, to stand on street corners soliciting day labor. The result, they say, is a new clash of cultures.

“Two years ago, you wouldn’t see anybody standing on the streets, flagging down cars,” said Hortencia Contreras, who has owned a flower stand near El Camino Real and Olivenhain Road for five years. “It was also recently that the number of people from Mexico and other countries living around here has increased. Both populations have grown, the undocumented and the people who have bought houses.”

According to Contreras, it is not only the recent alien arrivals who are seeing a different culture for the first time. There are many recent Anglo homeowners who have never before experienced living with illegal aliens as neighbors.

“Many of the people who have bought houses come from places where they never had contact with Mexican immigrants before. This is all new to them, and some are frightened by it,” said Contreras, herself an immigrant from Mexico City.

The awareness of Anglo hostility is especially strong among older members of the camps, some of whom have been living in the hills and canyons for a decade and longer.

“I know they don’t want us here . . .,” said Luis Jimenez, 50, of Oaxaca. “The people who live in these rich houses don’t like to see the garbage that some of us throw away.”

Recent Arrivals Blamed

Jimenez, who has been coming north for years and who, along with about 50 other aliens, lives in a camp near Fairbanks Ranch, says that the younger, more recent arrivals are partly to blame for the increased tensions. They play loud music on portable radios and leave their trash strewn in fields and along roadsides, he said.

Although the promise of a better life in the United States has turned out to be a bitter illusion for some migrants, those younger men from Mexico’s cities have not given up hope, despite dwindling work possibilities and having to stay one step ahead of the Border Patrol.

Miguel Vela, 19 and from Guanajuato, has lived in Valle Verde about 18 months. Vela, who favors Reebok high tops and American rock ‘n’ roll music, has European features and, with his tanned face, could easily pass for an Anglo beach-goer.

“I’m going to stay in this country and turn into a gringo,” he said with a laugh. “I like it here, but I know that I have to learn English. A lot of guys my age are trying to learn English because it’s easier to get a job if you can speak the language. That’s why we listen to rock ‘n’ roll on the radio. The older men make fun of us and tell us that we want to be gringos. But I bet that I’ll have a gringa girlfriend before they do.”

An older man who listened while Vela talked about his dreams snickered and shook his head in disagreement.

“The fantasies these boys have. They’re blind to the disdain that the gringos have for us. You can see it in their faces when we board the bus. They look at us like we’re too dirty to be around them. Well, we carry the dirt on our clothes, but they carry it in their hearts,” the man said as he walked away.

Rock ‘n’ roll and designer athletic shoes are not the only signs of attempts by Vela and other young men at assimilation.

In Encinitas, down the road from the La Costa Country Club, the aliens have laid out a dirt tennis court that provides one of the few forms of recreation for workers who live in Valle Verde.

A recent visitor encountered four young Mexican men playing tennis on the dirt court, with a badminton net hanging limply between two wooden posts. It was as incongruous in North County as the primitive huts hidden in the nearby hills, within view of the posh La Costa Hotel and Spa.

The pickup doubles game, which was played late in the afternoon, had attracted a group of camp spectators, who looked at the match with a mixture of amusement and bewilderment.

“All the gringos play tennis, and I never saw a tennis match until I came here 13 months ago,” said Celestino Lozano, 20, from the Mexican state of Queretaro, who was watching the novice match. “We see people playing tennis in La Costa all day. It looked like fun, so some of us started playing it.”

Tennis provides another example of the extent to which Anglo life styles have influenced the younger migrants. Some Valle Verde residents can be seen walking around with sweat shirts or shirts tied around their necks, much like the tennis players at the country club relaxing after a match.

Many aliens are spellbound by the wealth that they see in North County, and at the same time appalled at how money is spent.

Jimenez has lived in canyons around Fairbanks Ranch for nearly eight years and has worked as a gardener in Rancho Santa Fe and near the Helen Woodward Animal Center.

“I’m ashamed to say that some of the dogs and cats in the homes where I’ve worked live and eat better than my children and grandchildren,” he said. “Sometimes I fantasize about what I would do with the money that some of these people have. I want to build a house with electricity and gas for my wife. But I know that it is only a ludicrous fantasy,” Jimenez said.

Arturo Padron, who is also from Oaxaca and lives in the same camp with Jimenez, wondered if the mansions being built in the Fairbanks Ranch community of Del Rayo Downs are being constructed for single families.

“Why does one family need such a big house? You know, in Mexico those houses could easily be hotels,” Padron said.

Presbyterian minister Rafael Martinez, who has worked in the North County alien camps for three years, says that some of the wealthy people in North County depend on the poor migrants they now complain about.

“They complain about all these illegals, but they rave about the bargain with which you can hire these people. . . . I lived in Florida before I came here. . . . To find a worker for that (low wage) is very difficult. You just cannot believe, here anybody can hire any (alien) for almost any amount,” Martinez said.

“They still need the work and service of these people. They can’t get by without it, but they don’t like their presence, their appearance. They wish that, by 5 or 6 p.m., they would disappear,” he said.

The going rate for alien day labor in North County is $30 a day, which represents a bonanza to the migrants, when they are paid.

However, stories abound in the camps about unscrupulous contractors and homeowners who sometimes hire the men for two weeks straight and never pay them. They simply fail to pick them up one morning, after promising them a final day of work.

“The Chicano contractors are the worst exploiters,” said a worker standing along El Camino Real in Encinitas. “They cheat us all the time. That’s why many of us prefer to work for gringos. Let the world know that there is a Chicano cement contractor in Carlsbad who owes many of us money. When he stops to pick up workers on El Camino Real, nobody goes with him, except the guys who just got here and don’t know about him.”

“Why do the Chicanos treat us so bad?” asked Carlos Saldivar, another migrant. “The Chicano Border Patrol agents also treat us worse than the gringos. Don’t they realize that their grandfathers were probably also illegals like us?”

Another complaint from Mexican migrants is that, because most Anglos assume that all migrants are Mexicans, they get blamed for all crimes committed by migrants.

In fact, Brazilians, Argentines, Colombians, Cubans and men and women from virtually every Latin American country can be found living in the camps.

Martinez argues that aliens are the victims of another kind of prejudice in the reporting of crime. When crimes are committed by non-aliens, authorities rarely identify the suspects as being white or black, Martinez said. But, when an alien is charged with a crime, law enforcement officials immediately differentiate him from the other criminals by identifying him specifically as an alien or illegal alien, he said.

“The other (suspect) . . . they catch him, they state his name. In this other case (involving an alien), no. He’s always an Hispanic or illegal. So, this reinforces the idea that Hispanics, illegals, cause trouble,” Martinez said.

Has all the hostility from Anglo residents discouraged the migrants from staying in North County? Some aliens, unable to find work and tired of the hassles with law enforcement, have indeed chosen to return south. But for most, that is not a choice.

“Where else can people from Latin America go when there isn’t enough work to put food on the table?” asked Ruperto Quiroz, 36, who is from the Guatemalan province of Huehuetenango. “Why is it such a crime to come to this country and ask for a job? I don’t want a job that is already held by someone. My wants are modest.”